James Chapter Five, Problems & Prescriptions

 

James 5:13 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms. [14] Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.

 

James, by all accounts, was a practical man. His desire was to see the fervency of one’s faith manifest in our daily life via every action considered. God is our center and our whole. If we are in Him then our lives will reflect His beauty and holiness, however imperfectly. Always concerned with true faith that is testable and realistic, James prescribes antidotes and answers for various situations. On the heels of his commentary regarding persecution from the rich, James wonders if any of his readers are suffering. The idea behind the question isn’t ailment (which he gets to shortly) but rather suffering trouble or hardship, perhaps asked in light of what he just wrote. If so his solution is prayer instead of grumbling, James 5:9.

Our prayers to God ought to be transparent. The Psalms, for instance, are filled with passion, regret, anger and joy. Not every Psalm was simply a song of worship extolling God’s virtue. The Psalmists expressed very human emotion and brought to God very real petitions about life’s reality, evil’s power and sin’s influence. The prayer Christ taught His followers, “Our Father in heaven,” (Matthew 6:9) reveals the majesty of the One we’re speaking to, and the intimacy we can claim from that same personage. Peter counseled that Christians should be, “casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you,” 1 Peter 5:7. The writer of Hebrews contributes to this thought, telling us, “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need,” Hebrews 4:16. Yes, our prayer is directed to El Shaddai, the all sufficient One, who has existed before time and who alone has immortality. But He is also our Father through adoption in Christ Jesus. The Holy Spirit seals us, as it were, like a transaction whose payment was satisfactorily made when Jesus shed His blood on our behalf. So pray, and pray boldly.

 

To the cheerful James commends the Psalms. Many Psalms do extol the beauty of God’s holiness, and just like prayer is a form of worship in times of trouble, singing unto the Lord is worship when our hearts are merry. Just as there is an inherent danger in turning from God when affliction falls upon us, so too can comfortable times shipwreck our faith. Hardship’s trial can manifest when we think, “why would a good God let this happen to me?” whatever “this” entails. We need to consider that God HAS done something by punishing sin in Christ so that we may come to Him through faith in what Jesus has done for us. We may now have peace with God and the peace of God. But this present evil world is still peopled with rebels bent on having their will fulfilled. Sin’s calamitous consequences are seen on the news, in the tempest, and in the graveyard. Until God’s purpose for the present creation is finished the Christian marches across a battlefield, not home territory, and there is danger of being caught in that crossfire.

 

When things go well, however, a different problem rears its head. Moses instructs Israel: “So it shall be, when the Lord your God brings you into the land of which He swore to your fathers…to give you large and beautiful cities which you did not build, houses full of good things, which you did not fill…then beware, lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage,” Deuteronomy 6:10-12. Ezekiel elaborates, stating, “Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy,” Ezekiel 16:49. When our faith is not tested through trial and turmoil complacency can become a deadly poison. Like the Wizard of Oz’s poppy fields that lure one in through its initial beauty and put you to sleep, joyful times can make us forget our blessings and the One who provides them. To counteract this, even our joy should translate into praise to God. We ought to strive to bestow upon Him the privilege of guiding the believer through sun or storm. So James says to sing and devote that joy to the One who granted it. Share our heights with the One who carried us to them.

 

Thirdly, James asks of the sick. The sick, we are told, are to have the elders of the local church come and pray for the one who is ill. We know from Paul’s testimony to the Corinthian church that one reason for a believer suffering illness could simply be God’s chastening, 1 Corinthians 11:30-32, Hebrews 12:7. In Paul’s personal situation, when he prayed to God that his “thorn in the flesh” would depart God refused, 2 Corinthians 12:7-9. The weakness Paul suffered demonstrated human frailty buttressed by God’s might. The things done through Paul reflected not human effort then, but the Holy Spirit’s power at work in him.

 

Anointing, reaching back to the Old Testament, was done with holy oil, and to be anointed was to be set apart for a particular service. Mark 6:13 relates to us, “And [the apostles] cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick, and healed them.” The symbolic ceremony of anointing kings, priests and prophets within the Jewish community is recalled in this act. The oil itself holds no special power; it is no more efficacious for saving the sick than water baptism is for saving the soul. The point of it is the separation to service. The elders pled to God through prayer (their faith for the sick’s recovery symbolized in the anointing) that God will save the Christian so he or she may resume service. As is revealed in the following verse, it is the prayer of faith to God that saves the sick.